Fitness: The art of spring training

It pays to ease into your first outdoor workouts of the season even if you have been hitting the gym regularly: the first step is to set your goal at about half the distance you were doing before the winter break. Above, participants in a run up Mount Royal in support of Boston Marathon victims.

Photograph by: Pierre Obendrauf
, The Gazette

Spring has finally arrived and Canadians are clogging neighbourhood roads and sidewalks trying to get back into shape after a long winter. Yet as tempting as it is to get out there and hit the streets like you never left them, it pays to ease into your first outdoor workouts of the season.

Going too fast and too long the first time it’s warm enough to pull on spring gear can be a mistake for walkers, runners and cyclists of all abilities. Not only does your body need time to get used to the sun, wind and pavement, it takes a while to reach the same level of speed and conditioning you were at before dialing it back for the winter.

You may think this an obvious piece of advice, but when it comes to spring fever, we Canadians get it bad. As soon as the sun is out and the temperature hits the double digits, we’re out there with more enthusiasm than common sense.

Unfortunately, that enthusiasm is quickly replaced by fatigue as your body runs out of gas well before the end of the workout. Before you panic and wonder if age has finally caught up with you, consider taking a more measured approach to spring training.

The first step is to set your goal at about half the distance you were doing before the winter break — even if you’ve been hitting the gym regularly during the last few months or weeks. Let your body slowly get used to the more physically demanding outdoor environment before stretching it out longer.

The next step is pacing yourself better so that you have the energy needed to finish your workout. The best pacing strategy for this time of year is to start off slower than your normal pace with the intention of picking it up somewhere after the halfway mark. Called a negative split, the goal is to finish the last half of your workout faster than the first half.

Starting conservatively not only preserves energy for when you need it, it reduces the risk of an early season injury, builds confidence in your ability to achieve your workout goals and improves fitness, all worthwhile goals for this time of year.

Effective for walkers, runners or cyclists, negative splits work for all distances from walks under 30 minutes to bike rides that last several hours.

There’s no need to do a lot of calculations to figure out the halfway point of your workout, just divide your workout into a series of segments, gradually increasing your speed as you progress through the workout.

How slow should you start? Use the talk test to gauge your intensity. If you’re exercising with a partner, you should be able to hold a conversation. If you’re exercising alone, you should be able to say a nursery rhyme out loud.

Steadily build on that easy pace until the end is near. Then gauge the amount of energy you have left and decide how fast you want to bring it home.

During an everyday workout, you probably want your closing minutes to be done at a pace that requires effort, versus just cruising home. Later in the season, however, especially if you race on the local circuit or train with a club or group of friends, you may want to finish off that last segment at a pace that is as close to your maximum effort as possible provided that you can maintain that speed all the way to the finish line.

What does that kind of effort feel like? Again, use the talk test. This time, however, you should only be able to get a few words out while pushing toward the end of your workout.

As spring stretches on and your fitness improves, you can go ahead and start out a bit faster. Most elite distance athletes strive to maintain a consistent speed from start to finish, which ultimately results in faster times. But for the recreational athlete, it’s all about finding a strategy that works for you.

Some athletes, especially those with a few more miles on them, need more time to find their rhythm, which is why they start off slow. Others are just naturally slow starters who find it tough to come out of the gate fast, even in peak condition.

In fact, the nice thing about starting slow and finishing strong is that you always feel like you’ve got something in the tank, which makes your workouts more enjoyable. On the flip side, starting out fast can feel good, but trust me that feeling doesn’t last long.

In fact, struggling to complete a workout knowing that you’ve exhausted the last of your energy reserves is a life lesson you don’t want to repeat.

So go ahead and indulge in that spring fever. Just take a little extra time to smell the roses at the start of your workout before moving into high gear.

It pays to ease into your first outdoor workouts of the season even if you have been hitting the gym regularly: the first step is to set your goal at about half the distance you were doing before the winter break. Above, participants in a run up Mount Royal in support of Boston Marathon victims.

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